a growing and prevalent arrogance in the mainstream media I haven't noticed since the days before Dan Rather's ignoble fall from grace. Hazinski is a former NBC correspondent and is an associate professor of telecommunications and head of broadcast news at the University of Georgia's Grady College of Journalism.

Q: Do you think technology is changing [journalism]? That a good reporter will always find a venue because there are so many media outlets now?

Thomas: No, but I do think it is kind of sad when everybody who owns a laptop thinks they're a journalist and doesn't understand the ethics. We do have to have some sense of what's right and wrong in this job. Of how far we can go. We don't make accusations without absolute proof. We're not prosecutors. We don't assume.

Q: So if there's this amateur league of journalists out there, trying to do what you do...

Thomas: It's dangerous.

Helen Thomas, her senile dementia shielding her from the irony in the whole situation, goes on to make a lot of the same points that Hazinski makes in his piece today. The most compelling points the Old Media seems to be making these days is that no one in the blogging community has the scruples to adhere to the "unwritten ethical principals" of the mainstream media.

I'll give you a minute to compose yourself while you laugh out loud.

Why are Thomas, Hazinkski, and a growing number of mainstream journalists suddenly saying that those of us who are in the New Media shouldn't be trusted? Has there been some major faux pas that we've committed and didn't know? Did the bloggerati collectively all break one of the "unwritten ethical standards" recently?

No, the impetus for the criticism lately from all sides isn't something we did, it's something CNN did. Those that remember the controversy I caused a few weeks ago even intimating that New Media could be getting a black eye from the Republican YouTube-CNN debates are likely groaning right now, because what I predicted is starting to come to pass. The Old Media is realizing that the spin cycle is just right to start piling on and warn the public how dangerous and irresponsible it is for "citizen journalism" to exist.

Hazinski goes on to say that bloggers and folks in the wilds of social media "can be valuable addition to news and information flow" if the protections of regulations and journalism schools are used to "certify citizen journalists in proper ethics and procedures." Are these the proper ethics and procedures that Mark Halperin and Dan Rather adhered to during the last presidential campaign cycle, I wonder? What about the Fox News Channel? What about Helen Thomas, who can barely form a cogent thought during White House briefings, yet somehow is afforded the honor of first chair status in the briefing room. This is from whom I'm supposed to take my criticism?

I've always found it ironic that an industry of folks who all majored in something called "Communications" all work in a business where there is only one-way flow of information. The definition of communications is that information is flowing in both directions. Take, for instance, this very article I'm now writing. I have no doubt that for my cracks at Helen Thomas, there will be ten or fifteen comments rebuking me on how, despite the fact she's failing as a journalist these days in her aloofness, she has a long history of presidential criticism that should be respected. I'll read these comments and respond to them. If I were any MSM or Old Media organization, though, your comments wouldn't even have a venue to be heard through (or if there were such a venue, you'd best be able to bring your comment down to a polemic ten word zinger, so it could be used for a soundbyte on the next show).

That's where New Media excels. You're reading this, so you probably already know this. Social media only improves the conversation, decentralizing it further and making it portable and convenient. Unfortunately, though, it looks like the YouTube-CNN Republican debates may have set us back quite literally four years in proving ourselves to the public in such an undeniable way that we're above criticism.

So, I say to Hazinski: I can see, given your industry's stellar track record on credibility, why you think we New Media and "citizen journalist" types need to be certified, because we'd have to be insane to think you guys have a clue on how New Media journalism should be done.

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